Am I Trans Enough? How to Overcome Your Doubts and Find Your Authentic Self by Alo Johnston
we're all trans now
I fully expected to roll my eyes at this book: Am I trans enough (the answer, of course, is Yes! A million times yes! No matter where you are on the questioning spectrum, you are always, and for evermore, 'trans' enough!)
But I wanted to address the book more seriously when the author was willing to state that no one, ever, is sure. And personally, I think it makes absolute sense that this author finally bit the bullet and started testosterone. They spent 5 years ruminating on the idea! So, in many ways, just doing it meant they could move on to other goals in their life. After all, desisting is an internal, mental state - one that Alo Johnston must have reached numerous times over the years (p.13 "maybe I was just pinning all of my hopes on this one thing... maybe I just wanted to be trans because at least then I would have a path forward.") The only concrete action possible after Thinking About Being Trans is doing something about it.*
(*more on that later)
As you'd expect, the author is well versed in intersectionality. They are properly disdainful of colonialism, the inherent bias of those on top of the (current) hierarchy, and cultural appropriation - even realising where trans is vulnerable: p16 "I'm not like those real trans people with real dysphoria, so I'm probably appropriating the trans experience." Johnston has a point that the dominant culture (in this case: cis) uses assimilation to maintain their power and early transsexuals did indeed go that route, switching within the binary. Since this information was in the Internalized Transphobia chapter, it does beg the question though: is diagnosing the first trans people with internal transphobia a charitable view on these pioneers? Is it possible that the changes they made were not only beneficial to their well being and happiness, but something they actually wanted? In other words: weren't they trans enough?
I really appreciated that Johnston addressed the interconnectedness of desire and grief (p.94); that admitting your desire is also admitting your grief at not having/being the things you want. This is a very human condition. And even though Johnston encourages the reader to feel that grief in longer and longer bursts, they follow that chapter with one on how depression and anxiety can become habit - so there does seem to be a contradiction in accessing that grief, but also not accessing it too much or too often. But there was an even more glaring contradiction in the chapters that admitted the fears of regret and detransition are real. To overcome the fear of regret, Johnston suggests itemising all the things that could go wrong and realising that these outcomes could occur naturally, even without transition, or that maybe they were meant to be. A very zen approach. "Try to hold this thought for as long as you can tolerate it. Perhaps whatever happens is exactly what had to happen. One more time: Perhaps whatever happens is exactly what had to happen." And yet the same Buddhist temperament could have applied to any number of other scenarios - even the scenario where a person chooses to remain with the body they were born with. Having a chapter entitled "The Illusion of Responsibility" and then arguing that no one is ever 'to blame' for their choices is a weird way to frame a decision-making process.
Johnson claims that one of our dominant narratives (p.25) is: bodies determine gender, which determine gender roles, which determine destiny. But this is not borne out in our modern world! Fixed gender roles may have been the norm in the 1950s, but today, men and women do most of the same things (with the obvious exception of pregnancy and breast feeding); they have equal standing in society and government. When Johnston states "gender doesn't equal destiny," I wholeheartedly agree. Most of the western world agrees. But doesn't it also follow that gender now loses (at least some) importance? A person's name doesn't equal destiny. Nor their religion, or their favourite restaurant. Gender get demoted to a label, or a personality trait - an inconsequential category.
Sadly, Johnston is woefully under-informed in many parts of the book: confidently stating, without supporting footnotes of course, that puberty blockers are immensely safe and not permanent. They, of course, repeat the suicide myth (which is an audacious move when they equally claim that suicidal thoughts are an acceptable coping mechanism (pg107 If you have suicidal thoughts, then you have spent years needing those suicidal thoughts) akin to playing videogames, talking to friends, or masturbating). And in a rare instance of footnoting an actual study, it was cherry picked data about gonadectomy regret from an Amsterdam gender clinic that not only utilises entirely different protocols than in the USA, but was an actual requirement to changing their legal sex.
At this point I confess I ran out of patience. For every statement Johnston made, there was a contradiction soon after. Very early on, Johnston ask one of the greatest question in the book: How do you assess your identity and then claim your decision? Are you even allowed to decide that for yourself?
So which is it - do we discover who we are, or tell ourselves who we are? And if we tell ourselves what we are, surely we can tell ourselves something new the next day. And if identity can be told to ourselves, where are the limits, or the anchors? How can identity be so integral to our being if it is shapeless.
Ultimately, this book is another permutation in the common-enough self-help genre: instead of 'mindfulness' or 'CBT' or 'self-care', this author uses 'trans' to tell the same story: we are all looking to gain (self) acceptance.
. . . . .
*if only there was an action, an equally valid physical undertaking that solidified the decision making process. but alas, there is not
There's no such thing as "trans."
It doesn't exist.